The Glories of IrelandbyEdited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

Part 5 out of 7

following 1820, Ireland contributed more than forty per cent, of the
entire immigration to America from all European countries, and the
Irish Emigration Statistics show that between 1830 and 1907 the
number of people who left Ireland was 6,049,432, the majority of whom
came to America. The _Westminster Review_ (vol. 133, p. 293), in an
article on "The Irish-Americans", puts a series of questions as
follows: "Is the American Republic in any way indebted to those Irish
citizens? Have they with their large numbers, high social standing,
great places of trust, contributed aught to her glory or added aught
to her commercial greatness, refined her social taste or assisted in
laying the foundations of the real happiness of her people, the real
security of her laws, the influence of her civic virtues, which more
than anything else give power and permanency to a naissant and mighty
nation? The answer is unquestionably affirmative. We have only to
look back on the past, and to scan the present state of American
affairs, to feel certain of this." If it be further asked: "Does this
statement stand the test of strict investigation?" the answer must
also be in the affirmative, for in almost every line of progress the
Irish in America have contributed their share of leaders and
pioneers, thus proving that there are characteristics among even the
poor Irish driven to emigration for an existence that are as capable
of development as those possessed by any other race. When we scan the
intellectual horizon, we see many men of great force of character:
preachers and teachers; statesmen and scholars; philanthropists and
founders of institutions; scientists and engineers; historians and
journalists; artists and authors; lawyers and doctors, of Celtic race
and blood, while, in the industrial field, as builders of steamships
and railroads and promoters of public works, as merchants,
manufacturers, and bankers, and in all other fields of endeavor, we
find the American Irish controlling factors in the upbuilding of the
Republic.

Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Thornton, Taylor,
and Smith were natives of Ireland; McKean, Read, and Rutledge were of
Irish parentage; Lynch and Carroll were grandsons of Irishmen;
Whipple and Hancock were of Irish descent on the maternal side; and
O'Hart (_Irish Pedigrees_) declares that Robert Treat Paine was a
great-grandson of Henry O'Neill, hereditary prince of Ulster, who
"changed his name to that of one of his maternal ancestors so as to
save his estates". It was an Irishman who first read the immortal
Document to the public; an Irishman first printed it; and an Irishman
published it for the first time with facsimiles of the signatures.

At least six American Presidents had more or less of the Celtic
strain. President Jackson, whose parents came from Co. Down, more
than once expressed his pride in his Irish ancestry. Arthur's parents
were from Antrim, Buchanan's from Donegal, and McKinley's
grandparents came from the same vicinity. Theodore Roosevelt boasts
among his ancestors two direct lines from Ireland, and the first
American ancestor of President Polk was a Pollock from Donegal. The
present occupant of the White House, Woodrow Wilson, is also of Irish
descent. Among the distinguished Vice-Presidents of the United States
were George Clinton and John C. Calhoun, sons of immigrants from
Longford and Donegal respectively, and Calhoun's successor as
chairman of the committee on foreign relations was John Smilie, a
native of Newtownards, Co. Down.

Among American governors since 1800, we find such names as Barry,
Brady, Butler, Carroll, Clinton, Conway, Carney, Connolly, Curtin,
Collins, Donaghey, Downey, Early, Fitzpatrick, Flannegan, Geary,
Gorman, Hannegan, Kavanagh, Kearney, Logan, Lynch, Murphy, Moore,
McKinley, McGill, Meagher, McGrath, Mahone, McCormick, O'Neal,
O'Ferrall, Orr, Roane, Filey, Sullivan, Sharkey, Smith, Talbot, and
Welsh, all of Irish descent. Today we have as governors of States,
Glynn in New York, Dunne in Illinois, Walsh in Massachusetts, O'Neal
in Alabama, Burke in North Carolina, Carey in Wyoming, McGovern in
Wisconsin, McCreary in Kentucky, and Tener in Pennsylvania, and not
alone is the governor of the last-mentioned State a native of
Ireland, but so also are its junior United States Senator, the
secretary of the Commonwealth, and its adjutant-general.

In the political life of America, many of the sons of Ireland have
risen to eminence, and in the legislative halls at the National
Capital, the names of Kelly, Fitzpatrick, Broderick, Casserly,
Farley, Logan, Harlan, Hannegan, Adair, Barry, Rowan, Gorman,
Kennedy, Lyon, Fitzgerald, Fair, Sewall, Kernan, Butler, Moore,
Regan, Mahone, Walsh, and Flannegan, are still spoken of with respect
among the lawmakers of the nation. William Darrah Kelly served in
Congress for fifty years, and it remained for James Shields to hold
the unique distinction of representing three different States, at
different times, in the Senate of the United States. Senator Shields
was a native of Co. Tyrone.

In the judiciary have been many shining lights of Irish origin. The
Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court is Edward D. White,
grandson of a '98 rebel, and one of his ablest associates is Joseph
McKenna. No more erudite or profound lawyer than Charles O'Conor has
adorned his profession and it can be said with truth that his career
has remained unrivalled in American history. James T. Brady, Daniel
Dougherty, Thomas Addis Emmet, and Charles O'Neill were among the
most eminent lawyers America has known, while the names of Dennis
O'Brien, Chief Justice of the New York Court of Appeals, John D.
O'Neill, who occupied a like elevated place on the bench of South
Carolina, John D. Phelan of the Alabama Supreme Court, Richard
O'Gorman, Charles P. Daly, Hugh Rutledge, Morgan J. O'Brien, and
others of like origin, are household words in the legal annals of
America. There is no State in the Union where an Irish-American
lawyer has not distinguished himself.

The history of medicine in the United States is adorned with the
names of many physicians of Irish birth or blood. Several Irish
surgeons rendered valuable services in the army of the Revolution,
among whom are found Drs. McDonough, McHenry, McCloskey, McCalla,
Burke, Irvine, and Williamson. Dr. John Cochran was appointed by
Washington surgeon-general of the army. Dr. James Lynah of
Charleston, a native of Ireland, became surgeon-general of South
Carolina in recognition of his valuable services to the patriot army.
Dr. John McKinley, a native of Ireland, who was a famous physician in
his day, became the first governor of Delaware. Dr. Ephraim McDowell
is known in the profession as the "Father of Ovariotomy", as is Dr.
William J. McNevin the "Father of American Chemistry". Dr. John Byrne
of New York had a world-wide fame, and his papers on gynecology have
been pronounced by the medical press as "the best printed in any
language". One of the most conspicuous figures in medicine in the
United States was Dr. Jerome Cochran of Alabama. Drs. Junius F. Lynch
of Florida; Charles McCreery of Kentucky; Hugh McGuire and Hunter
McGuire of Virginia; Matthew C. McGannon of Tennessee; and James
Lynch, Charles J. O'Hagan, and James McBride of South Carolina are
mentioned prominently in the histories of their respective localities
as the foremost medical men of their times, while in Wisconsin the
pioneer physician was Dr. William H. Fox, and in Oregon, Dr. John
McLoughlin. Among New York physicians who achieved high reputations
in their profession were Drs. Thomas Addis Emmet, Frank A. McGuire,
Daniel E. O'Neill, Charles McBurney, Isaac H. Reiley, Alfred L.
Carroll, Howard A. Kelly, Joseph O'Dwyer, and James J. Walsh. These
and many others of Irish descent have been honored by medical
societies as leaders and specialists, while it can be said that no
surgeon of the present day has achieved such a world-wide reputation
as Dr. John B. Murphy of Chicago. Among experts in medico-legal
science, the names of Drs. Benjamin W. McCreedy and William J.
O'Sullivan of New York stand out prominently, and among the most
noted contributors to medical journals in the United States, and
recognized as men of great professional skill and authorities in
their respective specialties, have been Drs. F.D. Mooney of St.
Louis; Thomas Fitzgibbon of Milwaukee; John D. Hanrahan of Rutland;
James McCann and James H. McClelland of Pittsburgh; John A. Murphy
and John McCurdy of Cincinnati; John Keating of Philadelphia; John H.
Murphy of St. Paul; John W.C. O'Neal of Gettysburg; and Arthur
O'Neill of Meadville, Pa. Indeed, it can be said that American
medical science owes an incalculable debt to Irish genius.

Theodore Vail, the presiding genius of the greatest telephone system
in the world, is Irish, and so is Carty, its chief engineer. Morse,
the inventor of the telegraph, was the grandson of an Irishman; Henry
O'Reilly built the first telegraph line in the United States; and
John W. Mackey was the president of the Commercial Cable Company.
John P. Holland, the inventor of the submarine torpedo boat, was a
native of Co. Clare; and McCormick, the inventor of the reaping and
mowing machine, was an Irishman's grandson.

Sons of Irishmen have stood in the front rank of American statesmen
and diplomats who represented their country abroad. To mention but a
few: Richard O'Brien, appointed by Jefferson American representative
at Algiers; James Kavanagh, Minister to Portugal; and Louis McLane,
Minister to England in 1829 and afterwards Secretary of State in
1832. In recent years, an O'Brien has represented American interests
in Italy and Japan; a Kerens in Austria; an Egan in Chili and another
of the same name in Denmark; an O'Shaughnessy in Mexico; a Sullivan
in Santo Domingo; and an O'Rear in Bolivia.

Among historians were John Gilmary Shea, author of numerous
historical works; Dr. Robert Walsh, a learned historian and
journalist of the last century, whose literary labors were extensive;
McMahon and McSherry, historians of Maryland; Burk, of Virginia;
O'Callaghan, Hastings, and Murphy of New York; Ramsay of South
Carolina; and Williamson of North Carolina, all native Irishmen or
sons of Irish immigrants.

In the field of American journalism have been many able and forcible
writers of Irish birth or descent. Hugh Gaine, a Belfast man, founded
the New York _Mercury_ in 1775. John Dunlap founded the first daily
paper in Philadelphia, John Daly Burk published the first daily paper
in Boston, and William Duane edited the _Aurora_ of Philadelphia in
1795. All these were born in Ireland. William Coleman, founder of the
New York _Evening Post_ in 1801, was the son of an Irish rebel of
1798; Thomas Fitzgerald founded the Philadelphia _Item_; Thomas Gill,
the New York _Evening Star_; Patrick Walsh, the Augusta _Chronicle_;
Joseph Medill, the Chicago _Tribune_. Henry W. Grady edited the
Atlanta _Constitution_; Michael Dee edited the Detroit _Evening News_
for nearly fifty years; Richard Smith, the Cincinnati _Gazette_;
Edward L. Godkin, the New York _Evening Post_; William Laffan, the
New York _Sun_; and Horace Greeley, the New York _Tribune_. All of
these were either natives of Ireland or sprung from immigrant
Irishmen, as were Oliver of the Pittsburgh _Gazette_, O'Neill of the
Pittsburgh _Despatch_, John Keating of Memphis, William D. O'Connor,
and many other shining lights of American journalism during the last
century. Fitz James O'Brien was "a bright, particular star" in the
journalistic firmament; John MacGahan achieved fame as a war
correspondent; Patrick Barry of Rochester, an extensive writer on
horticultural and kindred subjects, was the recognized leader of his
craft in the United States; and William Darby, son of Patrick and
Mary Darby, and Michael Twomey were the ablest American geographers
and writers on abstruse scientific subjects.

In the field of poetry, we have had Theodore O'Hara, the author of
that immortal poem, "The Bivouac of the Dead"; John Boyle O'Reilly;
Thomas Dunn English, author of "Ben Bolt"; Father Abram Ryan, "the
poet priest of the South"; James Whitcomb Riley; Eleanor Donnelly;
M.F. Egan; T.A. Daly; and Joseph I.C. Clarke, president of the
American Irish Historical Society.

To recount the successful men of affairs of Irish origin it would be
necessary to mention every branch of business and every profession.
Recalling but a few, Daniel O'Day, Patrick Farrelly, John and William
O'Brien, Alexander T. Stewart, John Castree, Joseph J. O'Donohue,
William R. Grace, John McConville, Hugh O'Neill, Alexander E. Orr,
William Constable, Daniel McCormick, and Dominick Lynch, all of New
York, were dominant figures in the world of business. Thomas Mellon
of Pittsburgh; John R. Walsh and the Cudahy brothers of Chicago;
James Phelan, Peter Donahue, Joseph A. Donohoe, and John Sullivan of
San Francisco; William A. Clark and Marcus Daly of Montana; George
Meade, the Meases and the Nesbits, Thomas FitzSimmons and Thomas
Dolan of Philadelphia; Columbus O'Donnell and Luke Tiernan of
Baltimore, all these have been leading merchants in their day. Few
American financiers occupy a more conspicuous place than Thomas F.
Ryan, and no great industrial leader has reached the pinnacle of
success upon which stands the commanding figure of James J. Hill,
both sons of Irishmen. The names of Anthony N. Brady, Eugene Kelly,
James S. Stranahan, and James A. Farrell, president of the United
States Steel Corporation, are household words in business and
financial circles.

John Keating, the first paper manufacturer in New York (1775); Thomas
Faye, the first to manufacture wall-paper by machinery, who won for
this distinction the first gold medal of the American Institute; John
and Edward McLoughlin of New York, for many years the leading
publishers of illustrated books; and John Banigan of Providence, one
of the largest manufacturers of rubber goods in America, were natives
of Ireland. John O'Fallon and Bryan Mullanphy of St. Louis, and John
McDonough of Baltimore, who amassed great wealth as merchants, were
large contributors to charitable and educational institutions;
William W. Corcoran, whose name is enshrined in the famous Art
Gallery at Washington, contributed during his lifetime over five
million dollars to various philanthropic institutions; and one of the
most noted philanthropists in American history, and the first woman
in America to whom a public monument was erected, was an Irishwoman,
Margaret Haughery of New Orleans.

Irishmen have shown a remarkable aptitude for the handling of large
contracts, and in this field have been prominent John H. O'Rourke,
James D. Leary, James Coleman, Oliver Byrne, and John D. Crimmins in
New York; John B. McDonald, the builder of New York's subways; George
Law, projector and promoter of public works, steamship and railroad
builder; and John Roach, the famous ship-builder of Chester, Pa. John
Sullivan, a noted American engineer one hundred years ago, completed
the Middlesex Canal; and John McL. Murphy, whose ability as a
constructing engineer was universally recognized, rendered valuable
service to the United States during the Civil War. Among pioneer
ship-builders in America are noted Patrick Tracy fron Wexford and
Simon Forrester from Cork, who were both at Salem, Mass., during the
period of the Revolution and rendered most valuable service to the
patriot cause; and the O'Briens, Kavanaghs, and Sewalls in Maine.

But it is not in the material things of life alone that the Irish
have been in the van. Thousands of Americans have been charmed by the
operas of Victor Herbert, a grandson of Samuel Lover, and with lovers
of music the strains of Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore's band still linger
as a pleasant memory. Edward A. MacDowell, America's most famous
composer, was of Irish descent. The colossal statute of "America" on
the dome of the National Capitol was executed by Thomas Crawford, who
was born in New York of Irish parents in 1814; Henry Inman, one of
the very best of portrait painters, was also born in New York of
Irish parents; John Singleton Copley, the distinguished artist, came
to Boston from Co. Clare in 1736; Thompson, the sculptor, was born in
Queen's Co.; another noted sculptor was William D. O'Donovan of
Virginia; and Augustus Saint Gaudens, one of the greatest sculptors
of modern times, was born in Dublin. Other sculptors of Irish race
have been elsewhere mentioned. Among America's most talented artists
and portrait painters may be mentioned George P. Healy, William J.
Hennessy, Thomas Moran, Henry Pelham, Henry Murray, John Neagle, and
William Magrath, all of Irish birth or descent.

Ireland has given many eminent churchmen to the United States. The
three American Cardinals, Gibbons, Farley, and O'Connell, stand out
prominently, as do Archbishops Carroll, Hughes, McCloskey, Kenrick,
Ryan, Ireland, Glennon, Corrigan, and Keane, all of whom have shed
lustre on the Church. History has given to an Irishman, Francis
Makemie of Donegal, the credit of founding Presbyterianism in
America, while among noted Presbyterian divines of Irish birth were
James Waddell, known as "the blind preacher of the wilderness,"
Thomas Smyth, John Hall, Francis Allison, William Tennant, and James
McGrady, all men of great ability and influence in their day. Samuel
Finley, President of Princeton College in 1761, was a native of
Armagh, and John Blair Smith, famous as a preacher throughout the
Shenandoah Valley and the first president of Union College (1795),
was of Irish descent. Among the pioneer preachers of the western
wilderness were McMahon, Dougherty, Quinn, Burke, O'Cool, Delaney,
McGee, and many others of Irish origin.

Irishmen and their sons have founded American towns and cities, and
the capital of the State of Colorado takes its name from General
James Denver, son of Patrick Denver, an emigrant from county Down in
the year 1795. Sixty-five places in the United States are named after
people bearing the Irish prefix "O" and upwards of 1000 after the
"Macs", and there are 253 counties of the United States and
approximately 7000 places called by Irish family or place names.
There are 24 Dublins, 21 Waterfords, 18 Belfasts, 16 Tyrones, 10
Limericks, 9 Antrims, 8 Sligos, 7 Derrys, 6 Corks, 5 Kildares, and so
on.

Immigrant Irishmen have also been the founders of prominent American
families. One of the most ancient of Irish patronymics, McCarthy, is
found in the records of Virginia as early as 1635 and in
Massachusetts in 1675, and all down through the successive
generations descendants of this sept were among the leading families
of the communities where they located. In Virginia, the McCormick,
Meade, Lewis, Preston, and Lynch families; in the Carolinas, the
Canteys, Nealls, Bryans, and Butlers; and in Maryland, the Carrolls
and Dulanys are all descended from successful Irish colonizers.

Even from this very incomplete summary, we can see that Irish blood,
brain, and brawn have been a valuable acquisition to the building of
the fabric of American institutions, and that the sons of Ireland
merit more prominent recognition than has been accorded them in the
pages of American history. The pharisees of history may have withheld
from Ireland the credit that is her due, but, thanks to the
never-failing guidance of the records, we are able to show that at
all times, whether they came as voluntary exiles or were driven from
their homes by the persecutions of government, her sons have had an
honorable part in every upward movement in American life. Testimony
adduced from the sources from which this imperfect sketch is drawn
cannot be called into question, and its perusal by those who so
amusingly glorify the "Anglo-Saxon" as the founder of the American
race and American institutions would have a chastening influence on
their ignorance of early American history, and would reopen the long
vista of the years, at the very beginning of which they would see
Celt and Teuton, Saxon and Gaul, working side by side solidifying the
fulcrum of the structure on which this great nation rests.

REFERENCES:

The archives, registers, records, reports, and other official
documents mentioned in the text; the various Town, County, and State
Histories; the collections and publications of the following
societies: Massachusetts Historical Society, Genealogical Society of
Pennsylvania, New York Historical Society (34 vols.), New York
Genealogical and Biographical Society (44 vols.), Maine Historical
Society, Rhode Island Historical Society, Connecticut Historical
Society, South Carolina Historical Society, and American Historical
Society; New England Historical and Genealogical Register (67 vols.,
Boston, 1847-1913); New England Historical and Biographical Record;
Hakluyt: Voyages, Navigations, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the
English Nation (London, 1607); Dobbs: The Trade and Improvement of
Ireland (Dublin, 1729); Hutchinson: History of Massachusetts from the
First Settlement in 1628 until 1750 (Salem, 1795); Proud: History of
Pennsylvania, 1681-1770 (Philadelphia, 1797-1798); Savage:
Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (Boston,
1860-1862); Morris (ed.): The Makers of New York (Philadelphia,
1895); Pope: The Pioneers of Massachusetts (Boston, 1900), The
Pioneers of Maine and New Hampshire (Boston, 1908); Richardson:
Side-lights on Maryland History (Baltimore, 1913); Spencer: History
of the United States; Ramsay: History of the United States;
Prendergast: Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland.

THE IRISH IN CANADA

By JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., Ph.D., Litt.D., Sc.D.

When Wolfe captured Quebec and Canada came under British rule, some
of the best known of his officers and several of his men were Irish.
After the Peace was signed many of them settled in Canada, not a few
of them marrying French wives, and as a consequence there are
numerous Irish, Scotch, and English names among the French speaking
inhabitants of Lower Canada. Two of Wolfe's officers, Colonel Guy
Carleton, born at Strabane in the county Tyrone, and General Richard
Montgomery, born only seven miles away at Convoy, in the same county,
were destined to play an important role in the future history of
Canada. Montgomery was in command of the Revolutionary Army from the
Colonies, when it attempted to take Quebec, and Carleton, who had
been a trusted friend of General Wolfe, was in command of the
Canadian forces. The two men were the lives of their respective
commands, and with the death of Montgomery Carleton's victory was
assured. Carleton was made Governor-in-Chief of Canada, and during
the trying years of the early British rule of New France and the
American Revolution, his tact did more than anything else to save
Canada for the British. Bibaud, the French historian, says, "the man
to whom the administration of the government was entrusted had known
how to make the Canadians love him, and this contributed not a little
to retain at least within the bounds of neutrality those among them
who might have been able, or who believed themselves able, to
ameliorate their lot by making common cause with the insurgent
colonies." Shortly after being made governor, Carleton went to
England and secured the passage of the Quebec Act through the English
parliament, which gave the Canadian French assurance that they were
to be ruled without oppression by the British Government.
Subsequently, in 1786, Carleton, as Lord Dorchester, became the first
governor-general of Canada, being given jurisdiction over Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick as well as Upper and Lower Canada, and to him more
than to any other is due the early loyalty to the British crown in
the Dominion.

After the army the next important source of Irish population in
Canada were the loyalists who after the Revolution removed from the
United States to the British Dominions in America. There were
probably many thousands of them, more than enough to make up for the
French who left Canada for France when the territory passed over to
England. Among the Irish loyalists who went to Canada was the Rev.
John Stuart, who had become very well known as a missionary in the
Mohawk Valley before the Revolution, and who, though born a
Presbyterian, was destined to win the title of the "Father of the
Church of England in Upper Canada." When the first Canadian
parliament met in December 1792, Edward O'Hara was returned for
Gaspe, in Lower Canada, and D'Arcy McGee could boast that
henceforward Lower Canada was never without an Irish representative
in its legislative councils.

When the question of settling Upper Canada with British colonists
came up, Colonel Talbot, a county Dublin man, was the most important
factor. He obtained a large grant of land near what is now London and
attracted settlers into what was at that time a wilderness. The tract
settled under his superintendence now comprises twenty-nine townships
in the most prosperous part of Canada.

The maritime Provinces had been under British rule before the fall of
Quebec and contained a large element of Irish population. In
Newfoundland in 1753 out of a total population of some thirteen
thousand, Davin says that there were nearly five thousand Catholics,
chiefly Irish. In 1784 a great new stimulus to Irish immigration to
Newfoundland was given by Father O'Connell, who in 1796 was made
Catholic bishop of the island. Newfoundland, for its verdure, the
absence of reptiles, and its Irish inhabitants, was called at this
time "Transatlantic Ireland", and Bonnycastle says that more than one
half of the population was Irish.

In 1749 Governor Cornwallis brought some 4,000 disbanded soldiers to
Nova Scotia and founded Halifax. Ten years later it was described as
divided into Halifax proper, Irishtown or the southern, and Dutchtown
or the northern, suburbs. The inhabitants numbered 3,000, one-third
of whom were Irish. They were among the most prominent men of the
city and province. In the Privy Council for 1789 were Thomas Corcoran
and Charles Morris. Morris was president of the Irish Society and
Matthew Cahill the sheriff of Halifax in that year. A large number of
Irish from the north of Ireland settled in Nova Scotia in 1763,
calling their settlement Londonderry. They provided a fortunate
refuge for the large numbers of Irish Presbyterians who were expelled
from New England by the intolerant Puritans the following year. They
also welcomed many loyalists who came from New York and the New
England States after the acknowledgment of the independence of the
American Colonies by Great Britain. Between the more eastern settlers
around Halifax and those in the interior, the greater part of the
population of Nova Scotia was probably Irish in origin.

It was in the Maritime Provinces that the first step in political
emancipation for Catholics under British rule was made. In 1821
Lawrence Cavanaugh, a Roman Catholic, was returned to the Assembly of
the Province for Cape Breton. He would not subscribe to the
declaration on Transubstantiation in the oath of office tendered him,
and as a consequence was refused admittance to the Assembly. But he
was elected again and again, and six years afterwards Judge
Haliburton, better known by his _nom de plume_ of "Sam Slick", in an
able speech, seconded the motion to dispense with the declaration,
and Cavanaugh was permitted to take the oath without the declaration.

The War of 1812 brought over from Ireland a number of Irish soldiers
serving in the British army, many of whom after the war settled down
and became inhabitants of the country. They were allotted farm lands
and added much to Canada's prosperity. A type of their descendants
was Sir William Hingston, whose father was at this time a lieutenant
adjutant in the Royal 100th Regiment, "the Dublins." Sir William's
father died when his son was a mere boy, but the lad supported his
mother, worked his way through the medical school, saved enough money
to give himself two years in Europe, and became a great surgeon. He
was elected three times mayor of Montreal, serving one term with
great prestige under the most trying circumstances. He afterwards
became a senator of the Dominion and was knighted by Queen Victoria.

Prince Edward Island was settled mainly by the Scotch and French, and
yet many Irish names are to be found among its old families. It was
ceded to Great Britain in 1763, and the first Governor appointed was
Captain Walter Patterson, whose niece, Elizabeth Patterson, was
married to Jerome Bonaparte in Baltimore in 1803. Captain Patterson
was so ardent an Irishman that through his influence he had an act
passed by the Assembly changing the name of the island to New
Ireland, but the home Government refused to countenance the change.
At this time the island was known as St. John's, and the name Prince
Edward was given to it in honor of the Duke of Kent in 1789. One of
the most popular governors of the island was Sir Dominick Daly,
knighted while in office. He was a member of a well known Galway
family, and first came to America as secretary to one of the
governors. He afterwards became provincial secretary for Lower
Canada.

Canada suffered from the aftermath of the revolutions which took
place in Europe during the early part of the nineteenth century. The
year 1837 saw two revolutions, one in Upper, the other in Lower,
Canada, though neither of them amounted to more than a flash in the
pan. As might be expected, there were not a few Irish among the
disaffected spirits who fostered these revolutions. Their experience
at home led them to know how little oppressed people were likely to
obtain from the British Government except by a demonstration of
force. There were serious abuses, especially "the Family Compact",
the lack of anything approaching constitutional guarantees in
government, and political disabilities on the score of religion.
However, most of the Irish in Canada were ranged on the side of the
government. Sir Richard Bonnycastle, writing in 1846, said "The
Catholic Irish who have been long settled in the country are by no
means the worst subjects in this transatlantic realm, as I can
personally testify, having had the command of large bodies of them
during the border troubles of 1837-8. They are all loyal and true."
Above all Bonnycastle pledged himself for the loyalty of the Irish
Catholic priesthood.

One of the Irishmen who came into prominence in the rebellions of
1837 was Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, the editor of the _Vindicator_,
the newspaper by means of which Papineau succeeded in arousing much
feeling among the people of Lower Canada and fomented the Revdlution.
O'Callaghan escaped to the United States and settled at Albany, where
he became the historian of New York State. To him, more than to any
other, we owe the preservation of the historical materials out of
which the early history of the State can be constructed. Rare volumes
of the Jesuit Relations, to the value of which for historical
purposes he had called special attention, were secured from his
library for the Canadian library at Ottawa.

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, when the population of
Ireland reached its highest point of over 8,000,000, the pressure on
the people caused them to emigrate in large numbers, and then the
famine came to drive out great crowds of those who survived. In
proportion to its population Canada received a great many more of
these Irish emigrants than did the United States. Unfortunately the
conditions on board the emigrant sailing vessels in those days cost
many lives. They were often becalmed and took months to cross the
ocean. My grandmother coming in the thirties was ninety-three days in
crossing, landing at Quebec after seven weeks on half rations, part
of the time living on nothing but oatmeal and water. Ship fever, the
dreaded typhus, broke out on her vessel as on so many others, and
more than half the passengers perished. Many, many thousands of the
Irish emigrants thus died on ship-board or shortly after landing. In
1912, the Ancient Order of Hibernians erected near Quebec a monument
to the victims. In spite of the untoward conditions, emigration
continued unabated, and in 1875, in the population of Ontario,
Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, it was calculated that the
Irish numbered 846,414 as compared with 706,369 English and 549,946
Scotch (Hatton, quoted by Davin in _The Irishman In Canada_).

It had become clear that Canada would prosper more if united than in
separate provinces jealous of each other. The first move in this
direction came from the Maritime Provinces, where the Irish element
was so much stronger than elsewhere, and when a conference of the
leading statesmen of these Provinces was appointed to be held at
Charlottetown, P.E.I., September 1864, representatives of Upper and
Lower Canada asked to be allowed to be present to bring forward a
plan for a Federation of all the British Provinces in North America.
The British North America Act was passed, and received the royal
assent, the queen appointing July 1, 1867 as the formal beginning of
the Dominion of Canada.

Among the men who were most prominent in bringing about federation
and who came to be known as the Fathers of Confederation were several
distinguished Irishmen. Thomas D'Arcy McGee was the best known and
probably did more than any other Canadian to make the idea of
confederation popular by his writings and speeches. He had come to
Canada as a stranger, edited a newspaper in Montreal, and was elected
to the Assembly after a brief residence, in spite of the opposition
cries of "Irish adventurer" and "stranger from abroad," was
subsequently elected four times by acclamation, and was Minister of
Agriculture and Education and Canadian Commissioner to the Paris
Exposition of 1867. His letters to the Earl of Mayo, pleading for the
betterment of conditions in Ireland, were quoted by Gladstone during
the Home Rule movement as "a prophetic voice from the dead coming
from beyond the Atlantic."

Another of the Fathers of Confederation was the Honorable Edward
Whalen, born in the county Mayo, who as a young man went to Prince
Edward Island, where he gained great influence as a popular
journalist. He was an orator as well as an editor, and came to have
the confidence of the people of the island, and hence was able to do
very much for federation. A third of the Fathers of Confederation
from the Maritime Provinces was the Honorable, afterwards Sir, Edward
Kenny, who, when the first Cabinet of the New Dominion was formed,
was offered and accepted one of the portfolios in recognition of the
influence which he had wielded for Canadian union.

At all times in the history of Canada the Catholic hierarchy has been
looked up to as thoroughly conservative factors for the progress and
development of the country. After the Irish immigration most of the
higher ecclesiastics were Irish by birth or descent, and they all
exerted a deep influence not only on their own people but on their
city and province. One of the Fathers of Confederation was Archbishop
Connolly, of Halifax, of whom the most distinguished Presbyterian
clergyman of the Lower Provinces said the day after his death: "I
feel that I have not only lost a friend, but as if Canada had lost a
patriot; in all his big-hearted Irish fashion he was ever at heart,
in mind, and deed, a true Canadian." Among his colleagues of the
hierarchy were such men as his predecessor Archbishop Walsh,
Archbishop Lynch, the first Metropolitan of Upper Canada when Toronto
was erected into an archbishopric, Bishop Hogan of Kingston,
Archbishop Hannan of Halifax, Archbishop Walsh of Toronto, and
Archbishop O'Brien of Halifax, all of whom were esteemed as faithful
Canadians working for the benefit of their own people more
especially, but always with the larger view of good for the whole
commonwealth of Canada.

The Irish continued to furnish great representative men to Canada.
The first governor, Guy Carleton, was Irish, and his subsequent
governor-generalship as Lord Dorchester did much to make Canada loyal
to Great Britain. During the difficult times of the Civil War in the
United States, Lord Monck, a Tipperary man, was the tactful
governor-general, "like other Irish Governors singularly successful
in winning golden opinions" (Davin). Probably the most popular and
influential of Canada's governors-general was Lord Dufferin, another
Irishman. Some of the most distinguished of Canadian jurists,
editors, and politicians have been Irishmen, and Irishmen have been
among her great merchants, contractors, and professional men. In our
own time Sir William Hingston among the physicians, Sir Charles
Fitzpatrick among the jurists, and Sir Thomas George Shaughnessy
among the administrative financiers are fine types of Irish
character.

REFERENCES:

Davin: The Irishman in Canada (Toronto, 1877); McGee: Works; Tracy:
The Tercentenary History of Canada (New York, 1908); Walsh: Sir
William Hingston, in the Amer. Catholic Quarterly (January, 1911),
Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, in the Records of the Amer. Catholic
Historical Society (1907); McKenna: A Century of Catholicity in
Canada, in the Catholic World, vol. 1, p. 229.

THE IRISH IN SOUTH AMERICA

By MARION MULHALL.

I.--FROM THE SPANISH CONQUEST TO THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

South America, although comparatively little known until recent times
to the outside world, contains much to interest the missionary, the
scientist, the historian, the traveler, and the financier. The
twentieth century will probably see hundreds following in the
footsteps of their predecessors. In the meantime, the brilliant
achievements of numerous Irish men and women in that part of the
world are falling into oblivion, and call for a friendly hand to
collect the fragments of historical lore connected with their
exploits.

This paper will cover three periods:--

(1). From the Spanish Conquest to the War of Independence: here the
principal actors were maritime explorers, buccaneers, and mercantile
adventurers;

(2). The War of Independence from 1810 to 1826: in this period
Irishmen performed feats of valor worthy to rank with those in Greek
or Roman history.

(3). Since the Independence; a period of commercial and industrial
development, in which Irishmen have played a foremost part.

* * * * *

It has been said that George Barlow, the companion of Sebastian
Cabot, was an Irishman. Cabot was the first Britisher to sail up the
Rio de la Plata, and gave it its name just thirty-five years after
the discovery of America. Barlow was in the service of the king of
Spain, and in that country met Cabot, who had been appointed Pilot
Major to his Majesty in the year 1518. In 1577 we read of the famous
Admiral Drake's expedition to the River Plate, which he reached on
April 14, 1578. Evidently it was a successful one in the opinion of
Queen Elizabeth, for on Drake's return to Plymouth, September 26,
1580, she came aboard his ship and knighted him. There seem to have
been three Irishmen on this expedition, Fenton, Merrick, and Ward.
Fenton, who was in command of two vessels, was attacked by a Spanish
squadron between Brazil and the River Plate, and the battle continued
by moonlight until one of the Spaniards was sunk. The Spanish
historian adds that Fenton might have sunk another of the enemy's
ships, but refrained because there were several women on board.

Lozana in his _History_ mentions a revolution in Paraguay in 1555,
which was headed by an Irishman named Nicholas Colman. This
revolution was quickly suppressed by the Spanish viceroy, Yrala, but
Colman led a second revolution in 1570, when Captain Rigueline was
governor of Guayra. The mutineers named Colman for their chief, put
their treasures into canoes, and floated down the Parana until their
boats were capsized by some rapids, probably the falls of Apipe in
Misiones. The viceroy, on hearing of the revolt, sent troops to bring
back the fugitives, and the latter were treated with unusual
clemency. Lozana describes Colman as a daring, turbulent buccaneer.
For fifteen years he seems to have played an important part in
Guayra; his subsequent fate is unknown.

In 1626 an expedition commanded by James Purcell, an Irishman,
established itself on the island of Tocujos, in the mouth of the
Amazon.

Captain Charles O'Hara was sent by Governor Arana from Montevideo in
March, 1761, to destroy the old landmarks of Rio Negro and Ching
between the dominions of Portugal and Spain. The officer next under
him was Lieutenant Charles Murphy, afterwards governor of Paraguay.
This expedition suffered great hardships.

Several of the expeditions of the privateers of the eighteenth
century sailed from Ireland. Dampier, a skilful navigator, went on a
cruise to intercept the Spanish galleons returning from the River
Plate with booty supposed to be worth L600,000 sterling. He sailed
from Kinsale in September, 1703, with two vessels, and no doubt
amongst the crews were many Irishmen. It was on this expedition that
Alexander Selkirk, a Scotch sailor, was put on shore at Juan
Fernandez in 1704, where he remained until rescued by Captain Rogers,
who commanded the _Duke_, a vessel of 320 tons, which sailed from
Cork on September 1, 1708, touched by chance at Juan Fernandez, and
found the original of Defoe's remarkable story, _Robinson Crusoe_,
who presented a wild appearance dressed in his goatskins.

In 1765 Captain Macnamara, with two vessels called the _Lord Clive_
and the _Ambuscade_, mounting between them 104 guns, attempted to
take Colonia, in front of Buenos Ayres, from the Spaniards. Having
shelled the place for four hours, Macnamara expected every moment to
see a white flag hoisted, when, by some mishap, the _Lord Clive_ took
fire, and 262 persons perished. The Spaniards fired upon the poor
fellows in the water, only 78 escaping to land. Macnamara was seen to
sink. His sword was found a few years ago by a Colonia fisherman, who
presented it to the British consul at Montevideo. Most of the Irish
names still extant in the Argentine provinces, such as Sarsfield,
Carrol, and Butler, are probably derived from these captives. Among
the descendants of the survivors of Macnamara's expedition may be
mentioned the ablest lawyer ever known in Buenos Ayres and for many
years Prime Minister, the late Dr. Velez Sarsfield, and also Governor
O'Neill.

The year 1586 saw an expedition of a very different character,
consisting of the first Jesuits sent to convert Paraguay, under the
direction of Father Thomas Field, an Irishman, and son of a Limerick
doctor. Their vessel fell into the hands of English privateers off
the Brazilian coast, but the sea rovers respected their captives, and
after sundry adventures the latter landed at Buenos Ayres, whence
they proceeded over land to Cordoba. The year following they set out
for Paraguay, where Father Field and his companions laid the
foundation of the Jesuit commonwealth of Misiones, which had such
wonderful development in the following two centuries as to cause
Voltaire to admit that "the Jesuit establishment in Paraguay seems to
be the triumph of humanity."

Another Irish Jesuit, Father Thaddeus Ennis, appears in authority in
Misiones shortly before the downfall. In 1756, when Spain ceded San
Miguel and other missions to Portugal, Father Ennis was entrusted
with the removal lower down to Parana of such tribes as refused to
become Portuguese subjects.

Yet another Jesuit, Father Falkiner, son of an Irish Protestant
doctor in Manchester, who had himself studied medicine, was one of
the most successful travellers and missionaries of the 18th century.
Among his friends in London was a ship-captain who traded from the
coast of Guinea to Brazil, carrying slaves for the company recently
established by Queen Anne's patent, and he it doubtless was who
prevailed on the young physician to try a seafaring life. In one of
his voyages as ship surgeon, from Guinea to Buenos Ayres, he fell ill
at the latter port, and, there being no hotels, he had the good
fortune to enjoy the hospitality of the Jesuit superior, Father
Mahony, whose name proclaims his Irish nationality. Such was the
impression made on Falkiner by the kindness of the Jesuits that he
shortly afterwards was received into the Church and entered as a
novice in the College of St. Ignatius at Buenos Ayres. He spent the
first years of his missionary career in Misiones and Tucuman. Later
on he was despatched by his superior to Patagonia, and his success
there during 27 years was almost equal to what has already been
mentioned of Father Field in Paraguay. He converted many tribes, and
traversed nearly every part of Patagonia from Rio Negro to Magellan's
Straits, and as far inland as the Andes. He knew most of the Indian
tongues, and by his winning manners and knowledge of medicine gained
a great influence over the savages. When he published his life and
travels, such was the effect of his book upon the king of Spain that
he at once ordered surveys and settlements to be made along the
Patagonian coast, which Father Falkiner represented as exposed to
seizure by the first adventurer who should land there. Father
Falkiner's book has been translated into French, German, and Spanish.
He returned to England and died at Spetchly, Worcestershire, near the
end of the 18th century.

In 1774 the bishop of Ayachucho was Dr. James O'Phelan, who rebuilt
the old Cathedral of Pasco. His father was an Irish officer in the
Spanish army.

II.--THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

Towards the close of the 18th century the Pitt administration lent a
willing ear to a Venezuelan patriot, General Miranda, who proposed
that Great Britain should aid South America to expel the Spanish
rulers and set up a number of independent states. Spain being the
ally of France and paying an annual subsidy to Napoleon, it became
moreover the object of England to seize the treasure-ships
periodically arriving from the River Plate.

Hostilities having broken out in Europe in 1803, an English squadron
under an Irish commander, Captain Moore, captured in the following
year some Spanish galleons laden with treasure at the mouth of the
River Plate. In June, 1806, Major General William Carr Beresford with
a British squadron cast anchor about twelve miles from Buenos Ayres,
and with a force of only 1635 men took possession of that city of
60,000 inhabitants. The indignation which such a humiliation at first
caused among the people was in large measure calmed by the manifesto
which the conquering commander issued on the occasion. In the
_Memoirs_ of General Belgrano we read: "It grieved me to see my
country subjugated in this manner, but I shall always admire the
gallantry of the brave and honorable Beresford in so daring an
enterprise." Beresford was, however, unable to hold his ground, for
the Spaniards got together an army of 10,000 men, and re-took the
city. Beresford was made prisoner, but after five months' detention
he and his brother-officers, among whom was another Irishman, Major
Fahy, managed to escape. Thus ended the expedition of this brave
general, who nevertheless had covered himself and his little army
with glory, for he held Buenos Ayres as a British colony for 45 days,
and had he been properly supported from home the result would in all
probability have been vastly different.

General Beresford was one of the most distinguished men of his time.
He was the illegitimate son of the Marquis of Waterford, entered the
army at 16, and served in every quarter of the globe. After his
defeat at Buenos Ayres he captured Madeira, and was made governor of
that island. In 1808 he successfully covered the retreat of Sir John
Moore to Corunna, a difficult feat, for which he received a marshal's
baton, and was made commander-in-chief in Portugal. In 1811 he
defeated Marshal Soult at Albuera, and subsequently took part in the
victories of Salamanca and Vittoria. For these services he was made
Duke of Elvas, and the British government conferred on him in 1814
the title of Baron Beresford of Albuera and Dungannon. The same year
he was sent as minister to Brazil, and on his return was created
viscount. He married the widow of Thomas Hope the banker, and settled
down on his estates in Kent, where he died in 1854.

The brilliancy of Beresford's achievement in capturing Buenos Ayres
with a handful of men had dazzled the minds of English statesmen, who
felt that 10,000 British troops were enough to subdue the whole of
the vast continent of South America. In May, 1807, an expedition
comprising several frigates and transports with 5,000 troops appeared
off Montevideo from England. A month later Lieutenant-General
Whitelock arrived with orders to assume the chief command, and among
his officers were the gallant Irishmen, Major Vandeleur, who
commanded a wing of the 88th Regiment, and Lieutenant-Colonel Nugent,
of the 38th. Whitelock endeavored, but failed, to retake Buenos
Ayres. During the siege a small detachment of Spanish troops under
Colonel James Butler, after a terrific conflict, in which they sold
their lives dearly, were all killed. Agreeably to Colonel Butler's
request his remains were buried on the spot he had so valiantly
defended, and his tombstone was visible there until 1818.

It is a remarkable fact that several of the South American countries,
Mexico, Peru, and Chile, were governed by viceroys of Irish birth in
the critical period preceding the Independence, although Spanish law
forbade such office to any but Spaniards born. It was in recognition
of gallant services in Spain, in combination with the Duke of
Wellington, that General O'Donoghue was made viceroy of Mexico in
1821, but the elevation of the great viceroy of Peru, Ambrose
O'Higgins, was due to the splendid talents of administration already
displayed by him during twenty years of service in Chile. He was born
at Summerhill, Co. Meath, about 1730. An uncle of his was one of the
chaplains at the court of Madrid, and at his expense O'Higgins was
educated at a college in Cadiz. He then entered the Spanish engineer
corps, and in 1769 was given the command of the commission sent to
Chile to strengthen the fortifications of Valdivia. He was made
captain-general of Chile in 1788, was subsequently created marquis of
Osorno, and in 1796 was nominated viceroy of Peru, a position which
he held until his death in 1801.

The great viceroy left only one son, Bernard O'Higgins, who succeeded
General Carreras in the supreme command of the patriot army against
the Spaniards in 1813. In 1817 O'Higgins took a principal part in the
victory of Chacabuco, and was almost immediately appointed supreme
director of Chile, with dictatorial powers. During his
administration, which lasted six years, he gave every proof of his
fitness for the position. But, alas! it was the misfortune of South
America to surpass the republics of antiquity in the ingratitude
shown towards its greatest benefactors. It is then not surprising to
find that the Father of his Country, as O'Higgins is affectionately
styled, was deposed by a military revolution, and obliged to take
refuge in Peru, from which country he never returned. General Miller
and Lord Cochrane, in their _Memoirs_, give frequent testimony to the
honesty and zeal of Bernard O'Higgins. He was always treated as an
honored guest in Lima, in which city he died on October 24, 1842. He
left a son, Demetrio O'Higgins, a wealthy land-owner, who contributed
large sums for the patriot army against Spain.

Among other Irish commanders in Chile and Peru, who, during the War
of Independence, fought their way to dignity and rank, was General
MacKenna, the hero of Membrillar. He was born in 1771, at Clogher,
Co. Tyrone; his mother belonged to the ancient Irish sept of
O'Reilly, whose estates were confiscated after the fall of Limerick
in 1691.

General Thomond O'Brien, who won his spurs at the battle of
Chacabuco, seems to have been born in the south of Ireland about
1790. He joined the army of San Martin, and accompanied that general
through the campaigns of Chile and Peru until the overthrow of the
Spanish regime and the proclamation of San Martin as protector of
Peru. On the day (July 28, 1821) when independence was declared at
Lima, the protector took in his hand the standard of Pizarro and
said, "This is my portion of the trophies." Then, taking the state
canopy of Pizarro, a kind of umbrella always borne over the viceroys
in processions, he presented it to General O'Brien, saying, "This is
for the gallant comrade who fought so many years by my side in the
cause of South America." The inscription on the canopy, in O'Brien's
hand, says that it was brought to Peru on Pizarro's second journey
from Spain. Little did the viceroys think that its last owner would
be an Irishman.

General O'Connor, one of the most distinguished soldiers of the War
of Independence, played an important part in the final victory of
Ayachucho. For his gallantry on that day he was promoted to the rank
of general by the commander-in-chief, General Bolivar. After the War
of Independence he became Minister of War in Bolivia. General
O'Connor went to South America as an ensign in the Irish Legion under
General Devereux. He claimed direct descent from Roderic O'Conor,
last king of Ireland, 1186.

Captain Esmonde also fought in the War of Independence. He was
brother to the then baronet, Sir Thomas Esmonde, of Co. Wexford. In
later years Captain Esmonde was employed by the Peruvian government
to report on some proposed canals at Tarapaca. The vessel in which he
embarked was never more heard of.

Colonel Charles Carroll had served in Spain, but joined the Chilian
army after independence was gained. He was one of the most popular
officers in the army, and met with a sad fate. Being sent with too
small a detachment against the savage Indians, their commander,
Benavides, cut his forces in pieces and murdered all the officers in
a most cruel manner. O'Carroll had his tongue cut out and was then
butchered.

Lieutenant Colonel Moran, who commanded the Colombian legion at the
battle of Ayachucho, probably came out in the legion of General
Devereux.

Colonel (afterwards General) O'Leary was first aide-decamp to General
Bolivar, the Liberator, and received his last breath. He was nephew
to the famous Father Arthur O'Leary. Bolivar employed him on various
missions of great trust and says "he acquitted himself with great
ability." After the war, General O'Leary was appointed British charge
d'affaires at Bogota, and died in Rome in 1868. General Arthur
Sandes, a native of Dublin, was entrusted with an important garrison
in Peru on the close of the War of Independence.

Admiral Brown, the distinguished commander and hero of the War of
Independence, whose exploits may be ranked, like those of Nelson,
"above all Greek, above all Roman fame," was born at Foxford, Co.
Mayo, Ireland, on the 22nd of June, 1777. His father emigrated with
his family to Pennsylvania. A ship captain who was about to sail from
Philadelphia offered to take the intelligent Irish boy with him, and
the offer was promptly accepted. During twenty years he seems to have
voyaged to many countries; at one time we find him at Archangel.
Brown had been in Buenos Ayres just two years when the patriot
government offered him command of a squadron to commence hostilities
against the Spanish navy, then mistress of all the coasts and waters
of South America. On the memorable 8th of March, 1814, Brown sailed
out of the port of Buenos Ayres with three ships to commence a
campaign, which was destined to destroy the Spanish navy in this part
of the waters of the New World. With him went his fellow-countrymen,
Captains Seaver and Kearney. Brown's next exploits were against
Spanish shipping in the Pacific, and his entirely successful campaign
at sea against Brazil, in which he gained the mastery by his
wonderful skill, courage, and perseverance, keeping at bay the great
naval power of that country (which consisted at one time of fifty war
vessels) with his few, small, ill-supplied, and ill-armed craft.
After these great exploits Brown spent some months among the wild
scenery of Mayo, so dear to him in boyhood, and, returning to Buenos
Ayres, devoted himself to the quiet life of a country gentleman. He
died surrounded by his family and friends on May 3, 1857, and the day
of his funeral was one of national mourning. His widow erected a
monument to his memory in the Recoleta cemetery, and in 1872 the
municipality of Buenos Ayres granted a site for a public statue on
the Pasco Julio, which so often rang with the plaudits of the people
as they welcomed this great Irishman returning from victory.

No brighter pages occur in the history of the New World than those
which commemorate the gallantry and self-devotion of the Irish
soldiers who aided South Americans to throw off the yoke of Spain. In
1819 an Irish Legion of 1729 men arrived under the command of General
Devereux, a Wexford landowner, called the Lafayette of South America,
to fight in the campaign of General Bolivar. Devereux was
distinguished for his great bravery. After the War of Independence he
returned to Europe, being commissioned to form a company for mining
operations in Colombia, which country had appointed him envoy
extraordinary to various European courts.

Colonel Ferguson and Captain Talbot were both Irishmen and among the
last survivors of Devereux's Legion. It is computed that one-third of
the Irish who came out under General Devereux died in hospital. It
was this legion which won the decisive battle of Carabobo, June 26,
1821, going into action 1100 strong and leaving 600 on that
hard-fought field.

Among the officers who composed Bolivar's Albion Rifles we find the
Irish names of Pigott, Tallon, Peacock, Phelan, O'Connell, McNamara,
Fetherstonhaugh, French, Reynolds, Byrne, and Haig, and the medical
officer was Dr. O'Reilly. We find mention in General Millar's
_Memoirs_ of Dr. Moore, an Irishman, who attended Bolivar in most of
his campaigns and was devotedly attached to the person of the
Liberator. Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes, Major Maurice Hogan, Lieutenant
William Keogh, Captain Laurence McGuire, Lieutenant-Colonel S.
Collins also served in the struggle for independence.

The period of independence found a small number of Irish residents in
Buenos Ayres, mostly patrician families, such as Dillon, MacMurrough,
Murphy, French, O'Gorman, Orr, Butler, O'Shee, who had been exiled or
had fled from Ireland and obtained the king of Spain's permission to
settle in Spanish America. The descendants of these families are now
so intermarried in the country that they have mostly forgotten the
language and traditions of their ancestors; but they occupy high
positions in political, legal, and commercial circles.

III.--THE PERIOD AFTER THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

A remarkable influx of settlers from Ireland occurred between 1825
and 1830, to work in the _saladeros_, or salt mines, of the Irish
merchants, Brown, Dowdall, and Armstrong. Previous to this a few
Irish mechanics and others had come from the United States. In 1813
Bernard Kiernan came from New Brunswick. He seems to have devoted
himself to science, as the papers mention his discovery of a comet in
the Magellan clouds on March 19, 1830. His son, James Kiernan, became
editor of the government paper, _Gaceta Mercantil_, in 1823, and held
this post for twenty years; his death occurred in 1857. There is
reason to believe that the first Irishman who landed in Buenos Ayres
in the 19th century, exclusive of Beresford's soldiers, was James
Coyle, a native of Tyrone, who came in the _Agreable_ in 1807, and
died in 1876 at the age of 86.

In 1830 some survivors of an Irish colony of 300 persons in Brazil
made their way to Buenos Ayres. They had come out from Europe in the
barque _Reward_ in 1829.

The banker, Thomas Armstrong, who arrived in Buenos Ayres in 1817,
occupied the foremost place for half a century in the commerce of
that city. He was of the ancient family of Armstrong in the King's
county, one of whose members was General Sir John Armstrong, founder
of Woolwich arsenal. Having married into the wealthy family of
Villanueva he became intimately connected with all the leading
enterprises of the day, such as railways, banks, loans, etc. He took
no part in politics, but interested himself in charities of every
kind.

In 1865 another Irishman, James P. Cahill, introduced into Peru from
the United States the first complete machinery for sugar growing and
refining.

Still another Irishman, Peter Sheridan, was one of the chief founders
of the sheep farming industry in Argentina. His family claimed
descent from the same stock in Co. Cavan as Richard Brinsley
Sheridan, the great statesman and dramatist. Sheridan died at the age
of 52, in 1844, and was succeeded in the _estancia_ or sheep-farming
business by his nephew, James, whose brother Dr. Hugh Sheridan had
served under Admiral Brown.

The number and wealth of the Irish _estancieros_, or sheep-farmers,
in Argentina have never been exactly ascertained, but after the old
Spanish families they are the most important. It would be impossible
to give all the Irish names to be met with. Some of them own immense
tracts of land. Men whose fathers arrived in Argentina without a
shilling are today worth millions. Their _estancia_ houses display
all the comforts of an American or English home; their hospitality is
proverbial; and most of them have built on their land fine schools
and beautiful little chapels, in which the nearest Irish priest
officiates.

Many of the _partidos_ or districts of the various provinces of
Argentina may be compared to Irish counties, the railway stations
being called after the owners of the land on which they are situated.
Among the earliest families settled in Argentina in the farming
industries, we find Duggans, Torneys, Harringtons, O'Briens,
Dowlings, Gaynors, Murphys, Moores, Dillons, O'Rorkes, Kennys, Raths,
Caseys, Norrises, O'Farrells, Brownes, Hams, Duffys, Ballestys,
Gahans, and Garaghans. Dr. Santiago O'Farrell, son of one of the
earliest Irish pioneers, holds a foremost position among the
distinguished lawyers of the present day. An Irish engineer, Mr. John
Coghlan, gave Buenos Ayres its first waterworks. The British hospital
has at present for its leading surgeon a distinguished Irishman, Dr.
Luke O'Connor. A son of Peter Sheridan, educated in England, has left
the finest landscapes of South America by any artist born in America.
He died at Buenos Ayres in his 27th year, 1861. Among the public men
of Irish descent, fifty years ago, in Buenos Ayres, are to be
mentioned the distinguished lawyer and politician, Dalmacio Velez
Sarsfield, and John Dillon, commissioner of immigration. Dillon was
the first to start a brewery in Buenos Ayres, for which purpose he
brought out workmen and machinery from Europe. All of his sons
occupied distinguished positions. Richard O'Shee, president of the
Chamber of Commerce in Buenos Ayres, was born at Seville of an old
Irish family banished by William III. Among the many valuable
citizens of Buenos Ayres who perished during the cholera of 1868 was
Dr. Leslie, a native of Cavan, whose benevolence to the poor was
unceasing. Henry O'Gorman, for some years chief of police in Buenos
Ayres and afterwards governor of the penitentiary, was descended from
an Irish family which went to Buenos Ayres in the eighteenth century.
His brother, Canon O'Gorman, was one of the dignitaries of the
archdiocese, and director of the boys' reformatory. General Donovan,
son of an Irish Dr. Donovan of Buenos Ayres, had command of one of
the sections of the new Indian frontier.

The first Irish chaplain was Father Burke, a venerable friar
mentioned by Mr. Love in 1820 as over 70 years of age and much
esteemed. When Rivadavia suppressed the Orders in 1822, he allowed
Father Burke to remain in the convent of Santo Domingo. After his
death the Irish residents, in 1828, petitioned Archbishop Murray of
Dublin for a chaplain. Accordingly the Rev. Patrick Moran was
selected, and he arrived in Buenos Ayres in 1829. He died in the
following year, and was succeeded by the Rev. Patrick O'Gorman from
Dublin, who continued as chaplain during 16 years till his death in
1847.

The year 1843 is memorable for the arrival of Rev. Anthony Fahy, with
whose name the advancement of the Irish in Argentina will be forever
identified. This great patriarch was born at Loughrea, Co. Galway, in
1804, and made his ecclesiastical studies at St. Clement's convent of
Irish Dominicans at Rome. Being sent to the western states of
America, he passed ten years in Ohio and Kentucky, after which, on
the invitation of the Irish community of Buenos Ayres and by
permission of the superior of his Order, he came to the river Plate
at a time when the prospects of the country and of the Irish
residents were far from promising. The history of the Irish community
since that time is in some measure a recital of the labors of Father
Fahy. He it was who helped his countrymen to choose and buy their
lands which now are of such enormous value. Their increasing numbers
and prosperity in the camp districts obliged him to endow each of the
provincial _partidos_ was a resident chaplain. Most of these
clergymen were educated in Dublin, and soon showed their zeal not
merely in religious, but also in social spheres. Irish reading-rooms,
libraries, and schools sprang up and laid the foundation for the
refined Irish life of the present day in those districts. Among other
services, Father Fahy founded the Irish convent, bringing out some
Sisters of Mercy under Mrs. Mary Evangelist Fitzpatrick from Dublin,
to whom he gave it in charge. Father Fahy died in harness in 1871 of
yellow fever; he attended a poor Italian woman and on returning home
was at once taken ill. He lasted only three days and expired
peacefully, a martyr to his sacred calling. He died so poor that Mr.
Armstrong had to discharge for him some small debts, and five others
of his countrymen paid his funeral expenses. A fitting memorial of
the deceased priest, the Fahy College for Irish orphan boys in
Argentina, has been erected in Buenos Ayres, and a magnificent
monument of Irish marble, carved in Ireland, also perpetuates his
fame.

The priests, still living, who were co-workers with Father Fahy and
appointed by him to various _partidos_, are Monsignor Samuel
O'Reilly, deservedly beloved by his parishioners, and the Rev. Father
Flannery, whose appointment to San Pedro brought a great influx of
Irish farmers into that district. Among those who have gone to enjoy
their eternal reward are the brothers, Rev. Michael and Rev. John
Leahy, both of whom were indefatigable during the yellow fever in
Buenos Ayres. Rev. Father Mulleady, Rev. Patrick Lynch, Rev. James
Curran, and Monsignor Curley were also among the Irish priests of
that time.

The Fahy College is entrusted to the care of the Marist Brothers, who
are largely Irish. The community of Holy Cross of the Passionist
Fathers, who have as provincial the distinguished North American
scholar Father Fidelis Kent Stone, is almost entirely composed of
Irish and Irish-Americans. They have several establishments in
various provinces of Argentina. Irish priests are to be met with all
over the country. In Patagonia and the Chaco we also find a number of
Protestant missionaries sent out by the Irish branch of the South
American Missionary Society.

Archdeacon Dillon succeeded Father Fahy as Irish chaplain in Buenos
Ayres, and, although by birth and education an Irishman, he became
one of the principal dignitaries of the archdiocese. He was for some
time professor of theology in the ecclesiastical seminary of Buenos
Ayres, and accompanied Archbishop Escalada as theologian to the
Vatican Council in 1869. He was the founder of the _Southern Cross_
in 1874, the Irish weekly paper which is now so ably edited by the
gifted Irishman, Mr. Gerald Foley.

The first daily paper to appear in English in South America was the
_Standard_, founded in 1861 by Michael G. Mulhall, the distinguished
statistician, and it is still one of the leading papers in the
country. In conducting it Michael G. Mulhall was joined by his
brother, Edward T. Mulhall, in 1862, and for many years it was
continuously under their care. The _Standard_ still remains in the
Mulhall family, and has for its editor a cousin of the former
editor's, Mr. John Mulhall, who wisely directs its course. The
_Argentina_, an important paper in Spanish, was founded a few years
since by Edward T. Mulhall, Jr., a brilliant son of the late Edward
Mulhall of the _Standard_. The _Hyberno-Argentine Review_, a new
Irish weekly, is edited by another able Irishman, James B. Sheridan.
In Rio Janeiro the _Anglo-Brasilian Times_ was founded in 1864 by an
Irishman, Mr. Scully, who also wrote an important book on Brazil.

Ireland had also its representatives in South American diplomacy and
the making of treaties. As early as 1809 Colonel James Burke was sent
by Lord Strangford, British minister at Rio, on a confidential
mission to Buenos Ayres to negotiate the establishment of a separate
kingdom on the river Plate, with the Princess Charlotte as queen. In
1867 Mr. Gould, an Irishman, British charge d'affaires, endeavored to
mediate between the allies, Brazil and Argentina, and President Lopez
of Paraguay, but without success. Stephen H. Sullivan, British charge
d'affaires for Chile, signed the treaty of commerce and navigation
between England and Chile on the 10th of May, 1852. He was afterwards
appointed British minister at Lima, where he was murdered. The late
Chilian ministers to Buenos Ayres and London, William Blest Gana and
Albert Blest Gana, were the sons of an Irish Doctor Blest from Sligo,
who settled in Chile. In 1859 George Fagan signed a treaty with
General Guido for compensation of losses to British subjects during
the civil wars after the Independence.

The mining industry had among its pioneers brave sons of Erin. J. O.
French went to Buenos Ayres in 1826, and after an arduous mountain
journey arrived at the foot of the Cerro Morado, where he found
auriferous ores. Chevalier Edmond Temple, an Irish gentleman who had
served in Spain in a dragoon regiment, also landed in Buenos Ayres in
1826, and started across the Pampas, then almost uninhabited, until
he came to the mountainous country where the Potosi mines were
situated. In one of the defiles he lost his favorite horse, and in
his book he bids a touching farewell to the friendly steed which had
shared with him so many toils and dangers. Temple's successor in the
Argentine mining provinces was Major Rickard Seaver, a member of an
old Co. Dublin family.

Several books of travel in South America have been published by Irish
writers during the last fifty years. MacCann's _Travels in the
Argentine Provinces_, 1846-49, contains much that is valuable
concerning the history and manners of the country. Major Rickard
Seaver issued in 1863 an interesting narrative of his crossing the
Andes. Consul Hutchinson, an Irishman, published in 1864 his book
_Argentine Gleanings_, which was followed by another in 1869 called
_South American Recollections_. Robert Crawford, an Irish engineer,
led an expedition from Buenos Ayres in November, 1871, across the
Indian Pampas and over the pass of the Planchon in the Andes, to
survey an overland route to Chile, and subsequently published an
interesting account of his journey. The first book printed and
published in English, in South America, was the _Handbook of the
River Plate_, written by Michael G. Mulhall and published by the
_Standard_, in 1861. The same author also published the _Rural Code
of Buenos Ayres_ in 1867, and the _Handbook of Brazil_ in 1877. In
1871 he published an account of his travels among the German colonies
in Rio Grande do Sul. Twenty years ago the writer of this sketch
published _Between the Amazon and the Andes_ and the _Story of the
Jesuit Missions of Paraguay_. These books derive special interest
from the fact that she was the first foreign woman ever seen in
Cuyaba, the capital of Matto Grosso, whither she accompanied her
husband, 2500 miles from either the Atlantic or the Pacific seaboard.
They arrived as far as the Diamantina Mountains, beyond Cuyaba, and
saw the little rivers which form the sources of the mighty Amazon.

Casting a glance over South America, we see in every country and
province evidences of Irish genius employed not only in fighting but
in the development of natural resources. To quote Consul Cowper's
report to the Foreign Office in London: "The progress of Buenos Ayres
is mainly due to the industrious Irish sheep farmers." No other
nationality contributed so largely to the export trade of the
country. At one time it was shown by the tables of Mr. Duggan and
other wool exporters that the quantity of this staple industry yearly
sold by Irishmen in Buenos Ayres exceeded that sold by all other
nationalities. In later years the Irish sheep farmers in the province
of Buenos Ayres have turned their lands into wheat lands, and the
great industries of the country, sheep and cattle, have been moved to
the outside camps, especially to that wonderful grazing region in the
Andine valleys recently visited by Col. Roosevelt and his party. It
may be interesting to mention that at the first English races ever
held in South America, on November 6, 1826, the principal event, in
which ten horses ran, was easily won by an Irish horse with the
appropriate name of "Shamrock."

REFERENCES:

Beaumont: Travels In Buenos Ayres (1828); Wilson: Travels In South
America (1796); Pinkerton: Travels (1808), Captain Weddell: Cape Horn
and South Atlantic Surveys; Major Gillesple: Buenos Ayres and
Provinces; Mrs. Williams, on Humboldt's Travels (1826); Captain
Master: At Home with the Patagonians (1891); Hadfield: Notes of
Travel in Brazil and La plata (1863); Hinchcliff: South American
Sketches (1862); Captain Burton: Highlands of Brazil; Ross Johnston:
A Vacation in the Argentine Alps (1867); MacCann: Travels in the
Argentine Provinces (1846-1849); Hutchinson: Argentine Gleanings and
South American Recollections; Major Seaver: Crossing the Andes;
Crawford: Across the Pampas; V. MacKenna: Life of O'Higgins; Life of
Diego Rimagro; History of Santiago; History of Valparaiso; MacKenna:
Archives of Spanish America, 50 vols.; Miller: Memoirs; Lives of
Belgrano and San Martin; Mulhall; English In South America.

THE IRISH IN AUSTRALASIA

By BROTHER LEO, F.S.C., M.A.

Should one be called upon to give in brief the history of the Irish
in the land of the Southern Cross, he could do nothing more to the
purpose than to relate the story of the "Holy House of Australia."
The episode, indeed, is characteristic, not merely of the Irish in
Australia, but of the Irish in every land and clime where they have
striven and conquered.

On the fourteenth of November, 1817, there landed in Sydney an Irish
Cistercian Father, Jeremiah F. Flynn. He had heard in Rome of the
spiritual destitution of the Irish Catholics in Australia, and he
secured the permission of his superiors to minister to the needs of
his compatriots in the Antipodes. Shortly after his arrival he
celebrated Mass in the house of an Irishman named William Davis, who
had been transported for making pikes for the insurgents in the days
of '98, and then, on the first opportunity that presented itself, he
sought the authorization of the colonial governor to exercise the
functions of his sacred ministry. Far from hospitable was the
reception accorded him by Governor Macquarie. The priest was told,
with the bluntness characteristic of British officialdom, that the
presence of no "popish missionary" would be tolerated in the
settlement, and that the profession of the Protestant form of belief
was obligatory on every person in the penal colony.

With the example of the "priesthood hunted down like wolves" before
him, Father Flynn saw but one consistent course to pursue. His fellow
Catholics, his fellow Irishmen, were in sore need of his help; that
help they must receive, even though the civil powers refused their
sanction. So for several months he went about as secretly as he
could, hearing confessions, offering the Holy Sacrifice, and breaking
the bread of good counsel. During this trying period, Davis was his
host and defender and friend. Eventually the presence of the priest
was detected; he was arrested and promptly sent back to England.
Before the ship sailed he tried repeatedly to return to the house of
Davis where the Blessed Sacrament was preserved in a cedar
clothes-press, but the surveillance of his captors was strict and
unsleeping. So in the dwelling of the convict Irishman the Sacred
Species remained. Before this unwonted repository Davis kept a light
ever burning day and night; and day and night crept the loyal
Irishmen of the settlement to kneel in prayer before the improvised
shrine. The "Holy House of Australia", as the Davis dwelling came to
be known, remained the only Catholic church in the colony until 1821,
when two Irish priests, Father John Joseph Therry of Cork and Father
Philip Connolly of Kildare, were permitted to attend to the spiritual
needs of the Irish Catholics. Their coming marked the beginning of
religious toleration in Australia and the termination of the
sufferings and sacrifices of the Irish colonists, several of whom had
had to pay dearly for their religious convictions. Davis himself had
been twice flogged and once imprisoned for refusing to attend
Protestant service.

Today, on the site of the "Holy House of Australia", stands the
church of St. Patrick. Davis gave the land and the sum of one
thousand pounds to the church, and his fellow exiles contributed
according to their means. This episode in the history of the Irish in
Australia pays a touchingly eloquent tribute to the spirit of loyalty
to God and country which has characterized the sons and daughters of
St. Patrick everywhere whither their feet have strayed. It is the
spirit which has embodied itself in the imposing cathedral of St.
Patrick in Melbourne and the splendidly equipped college of St.
Patrick in Sydney. It is the spirit which has made the Irish play so
conspicuous a role in the civic and commercial history of
Australasia.

Originally known as New Holland, Australia became an English penal
colony after the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in the United
States of America. An Irish element came into the colony in the last
decade of the eighteenth century when, during the Orange reign of
terror, upwards of a thousand people from the west of Ireland were
deported by the Ulster magistrates and by Lord Carhampton, the
notorious "Satanides", who was charged with the pacification of
Connacht. And during the first three decades of the nineteenth
century the stream of Irish transportation flowed on. As a result of
the Tithes agitation, the Charter and Reform movements, the
Combination Laws and the Corn Laws, many more Irishmen were forced
across the sea. It was not until 1868 that the convict system was
permanently abolished.

It is difficult for us of a later day to realize the meaning of that
word, transportation. Let us form some conception of what the Irish
exiles suffered from the graphic picture painted in colors, somber
but not untrue, by one who knew from firsthand experience the lot of
the political prisoner. Writes Dr. Ullathorne in _The Horrors of
Transportation_:

"Take any one of you, my dear readers; separate him from his wife,
from his children, from all those whose conversation makes life dear
to him; cast him on the ends of the earth; let him there fall amongst
reprobates who are the last stain and disgrace of our common nature;
give him those obscene-mouthed monsters for his constant companions
and consolers; let the daily vision of their progress from infamy to
infamy, until the demon that inspires them has exhausted invention
and the powers of nature together, be his only example; house him, at
night, in a bark hut on a mud floor, where he has less comfort than
your cattle in their stalls; awake him from the troubled dreams of
his wretched wife and outcast children, to feel how far he is from
their help, and take him out at sunrise; work him under a burning
sun, and a heartless overseer, and the threat of the lash until the
night fall; give him not a penny's wages but sorrow; leave him no
hope but the same dull, dreary round of endless drudgery for many
years to come; let him see no opening by which to escape, but through
a long, narrow prospect of police courts, of gaols, of triangles, of
death cells, and of penal settlements; let him all the while be
clothed in a dress of shame, that shows to every living soul his
degradation; and if he dare to sell any part of that clothing, then
flog him worse than any dog! And thus, whilst severed from all
kindness and all love, whilst the stern harsh voice of his
task-master is grating in incessant jars within his ear, take all
rest out of his flesh, and plant the thorn; take all feeling out of
his heart, and leave the withered core; take all peace out of his
conscience, and leave the worm of remorse; and then let any one come
and dare to tell me that the man is happy because he has bread and
meat. Is it not here, if ever there was such a case, where the taste
of bread is a taste of misery, and where to feed and prolong life is
to feed and lengthen our sorrow? And in pondering these things, do
not those strong words of Sacred Scripture bring down their load of
truth in heavy trouble to our thoughts, that, 'Their bread is
loathsome to their eye, and their meat unto their soul.'"

But the bright side of the story of the Irish in Australia and New
Zealand unfolds in the subsequent years. The men who had been sent
forth from Erin with the brand of the convict upon them became the
founders of a new commonwealth. To them were joined the numerous
voluntary settlers who, attracted by the natural resources of the
island-continent and especially by the gold discoveries of the
fifties, migrated to Queensland, Victoria, and New South Wales. When
in 1858 William E. Gladstone sought to establish a new colony to be
known as North Australia, he opened a fresh field for Irish
initiative. As a result of his effort there stands today, on a
terrace overlooking Port Curtis, the city of Gladstone, the terminal
of the Australian railway system. It was here, according to Cardinal
Moran, that in 1606, Mass was first celebrated in Australia, when the
Spaniards sought shelter in the "Harbor of the Holy Cross." The first
government resident at Gladstone was Sir Maurice Charles O'Connell, a
relative of the great Liberator; he was four times acting-governor of
Queensland.

The list of Irish pioneer settlers in Australasia is a lengthy one.
The name of Thomas Poynton stands out prominently. He was a New
Zealand pioneer who had married an Irish girl in Sydney. The devotion
of Poynton and his wife to the faith of their fathers is evidenced by
the fact that he several times made the long journey from his home to
Sydney to interest the church authorities in the wants of the New
Zealand Irish Catholics, and that she twice made the same arduous
trip to have her children baptized. Thomas Mooney has the distinction
of being the first Irish pioneer in Western Australia; and yet
another Irishman, Cassidy by name, carried out a policy of benevolent
assimilation by marrying the daughter of a Maori chief.

Among the pioneer ecclesiastics were Father William Kelly of
Melbourne and Father John McEncroe, a native of Tipperary and a
Maynooth man, who for thirty years and more was a prominent figure in
the religious and civic life of New South Wales. Father John Brady,
another pioneer priest, became Bishop of Perth. Irish names occupy a
conspicuous and honored place in the roster of the Australian
episcopate. Notable on the list are Bishop Francis Murphy of
Adelaide, who was born in Co. Meath, and Archbishop Daniel Murphy of
Sydney, a native of Cork, the man who delivered the eulogy on the
occasion of Daniel O'Connell's funeral at Rome. But scant reference
can here be made to the illustrious primate of Australia, Cardinal
Moran, archbishop of Sydney from 1884 to 1911, who was such a potent
force in the land of his adoption, and whose masterly _History of the
Catholic Church in Australasia_ puts him in the forefront of
ecclesiastical historians. On his death he was succeeded in the see
of Sydney by another Irishman, Archbishop Michael Kelly of Waterford.
Archbishop O'Reily of Adelaide is a recognized authority on music,
and has written several pamphlets on that subject. A Galway man, Dr.
T. J. Carr, a great educator, is now (1914) archbishop of Melbourne,
and a Clare man, Dr. J. P. Clune, holds sway in Perth.

Irishmen in Australia have figured largely in the iron and coal
industries, in the irrigation projects, in the manufacturing
activities, and in the working of the gold mines. But they have
likewise distinguished themselves in other fields of endeavor.
Prominent on the beadroll of Australian fame stand the names of Sir
Charles Gavan Duffy (1816-1903), founder of the _Nation_ newspaper in
Dublin, member of the British house of commons, and afterwards
premier of Victoria and speaker of the legislative assembly, and his
sons, John Gavan Duffy and Frank Gavan Duffy, public-spirited
citizens and authorities on legal matters. The Currans, father and
son, active in the public life of Sydney, were afterwards members of
the British parliament. Distinguished in the records of the
Australian judiciary are Judges Quinlan, Casey, Brennan, and O'Dowd.
The Rev. J. Milne Curran, F.G.S., is a geologist who has achieved
more than local fame. Other Irishmen who have loomed large in
Australasian affairs are Daniel Brophy, John Cumin, Augustus Leo
Kenny, James Coghlan, Sir Patrick Buckley, Sir John O'Shannessy, and
Nicholas Fitzgerald. Louis C. Brennan, C.B., who was born in Ireland
in 1852, emigrated to Australia when a boy and while working in a
civil engineer's office in Melbourne conceived the idea of the
"Brennan Torpedo", which he afterwards perfected, and then in 1897
sold the invention to the British Admiralty for L110,000. Another
Brennan, Frank by name, is president of the Knights of Our Lady of
the Southern Cross and has been a labor member of the federal
parliament since 1911; a third, Christopher John, is assistant
lecturer in modern literature in the University of Sydney; and a
fourth, James, of the diocese of Perth, was made a Knight of St.
Silvester by Pius X. in 1912. Young Australia and New Zealand may be
as the world goes, but already both have much to their credit in the
domains of music, art, and literature; and here, as usual, the Irish
have been to the fore. In the writing of poetry, history, and fiction
the Celtic element has been especially distinguished. Not to speak of
the writers mentioned elsewhere in this sketch, scores of Irish men
and women have been identified with the development of an Australian
literature which, though delightfully redolent of the land whence it
sprang, nevertheless possesses the universal note which makes it a
truly human product. Many years ago one of the most gifted of
Irish-Australian singers, "Eva"' of the _Nation_, voiced a tentative
plaint:

"O barren land! O blank, bright sky!
Methinks it were a noble duty
To kindle in that vacant eye
The light of spirit--beauty--
To fill with airy shapes divine
Thy lonely plains and mountains,
The orange grove, the bower of vine,
The silvery lakes and fountains;
To wake the voiceless, silent air
To soft, melodious numbers;
To raise thy lifeless form so fair
From those deep, spell-bound slumbers.
Oh, whose shall be the potent hand
To give that touch informing,
And make thee rise, O Southern Land,
To life and poesy warming?"

Mrs. O'Doherty herself, who long lived in that Queensland which she
thus apostrophized, helped in no uncertain way to answer her own
question. So did John Farrell, the author of the truly remarkable
"Jubilee Ode" of 1897 and of a collection of poems which include the
well known "How He Died." And so, long before, had the non-Catholic
Irishman, Edward O'Shaughnessy, who went to Australia as a convict,
but who laughed in lockstep and made music with his chains.

James Francis Hogan, author and journalist, was born in Tipperary in
1855 and shortly afterward was brought by his parents to Melbourne
where he received his education. On his return to Ireland he was
elected to represent his native county in parliament. He is an
authority on Australian history and in his book on _The Gladstone
Colony_ has given us a fine specimen of modern historical method.
With him must be mentioned Roderick Flanagan, whose _History of New
South Wales_ appeared in 1862.

Finally, the Irish in Australia have done more than their share in
the work of education and social service. Under Irish auspices
several of the Catholic teaching congregations, including the
Christian Brothers and the Presentation Nuns, were introduced, and
their work has borne goodly fruit. A mighty power for good is the
Hibernian Australasian Benefit Society. The organization, which was
founded in 1871, has spread rapidly and has a large active
membership.

Truly the land of the Southern Cross is not the dimmest jewel in the
coronet of Ireland's glories.

REFERENCES:

Hogan: The Irish in Australia (1888), The Gladstone Colony (1898);
Mennell: Dictionary of Australian Biography (1892); Duffy: Life in
Two Hemispheres (1903); Kenny: The Catholic Church in Australia to
the Year 1840; Moran: History of the Catholic Church in Australasia
(1898); Davitt: Life and Progress in Australasia (1898); Bonwick: The
First Twenty Years of Australia (1883); Flanagan: History of New
South Wales (1862); Byrne: Australian Writers (1896); Wilson: The
Church in New Zealand (1910); Hocken: A Bibliography of the
Literature Relating to New Zealand (1909).

THE IRISH IN SOUTH AFRICA

By A. MILLIARD ATTERIDGE.

The tide of emigration from Ireland has set chiefly towards America
and Australia. In South Africa, therefore, the Irish element among
the colonists has never been a large one. But, despite its
comparatively small numbers, it has been an important factor in the
life of South Africa. Here, as in so many other countries, it has
been the glory of the sons of Erin to be a missionary people. To
their coming is due the very existence of the Catholic Church in
these southern lands.

When Dr. Ullathorne touched at the Cape on his way to Australia in
1832, he found at Cape Town "a single priest for the whole of South
Africa," an English Benedictine, who soon afterwards returned to
Europe in broken health. Few Irish immigrants had by that time found
their way to the Cape. They began to arrive in numbers only after the
famine year.

The founder of the Catholic hierarchy in South Africa was the Irish
Dominican, Patrick R. Griffith, who, in 1837, was sent to Cape Town
by Gregory XVI. as the first Vicar Apostolic of Cape Colony. His
successors at the Cape, Bishops Grimley, Leonard, and Rooney, have
all been Irishmen, and nine in every ten of their flock have from the
first been Irish by birth or descent. In the earlier years of Bishop
Griffith's episcopate there was a large garrison in South Africa on
account of the Kaffir wars. Many of these soldiers were Irishmen. At
Grahamstown in 1844 the soldiers of an Irish regiment stationed there
did most of the work of building St. Patrick's Church, one of the
oldest Catholic churches in South Africa. They worked without wages
or reward of any kind, purely out of their devotion to their Faith,
giving up most of their leisure to this voluntary labor.

Ten years after Bishop Griffith's appointment, Pius IX. separated
Natal and the eastern districts of Cape Colony from Cape Town, and
erected the Eastern Vicariate Apostolic. Once more an Irish prelate
was the first Bishop--Aidan Devereux, who was consecrated by Bishop
Griffith at Cape Town in the Christmas week of 1847. The great
emigration from Ireland had now begun, and a stream of immigrants was
arriving at the Cape. Bishop Devereux fixed his residence at Port
Elizabeth, and of his four successors up to the present day three
have been Irish. Bishop Moran, who went out to Port Elizabeth in
1854, was consecrated at Carlow in Ireland by Archbishop (afterwards
Cardinal) Cullen. The third Vicar Apostolic was Bishop Ricards, and
the present bishop is another Irishman, Dr. Hugh McSherry, who
received his consecration from the hands of Cardinal Logue in St.
Patrick's Cathedral at Armagh.

Until the discovery of the diamond deposits in what is now the
Kimberley district, some forty years ago, the Irish immigrants had
chiefly settled in the ports and along the coast. But among the
crowds who went to seek their fortunes at the diamond fields were
large numbers of adventurous Irishmen. The mission church established
at Kimberley became the centre of a new bishopric in 1886, when the
Vicariate of Kimberley, which for some time included the Orange Free
State, was established, and an Irish Oblate, Father Anthony Gaughran,
was appointed its first bishop. He was succeeded in 1901 by his
namesake and fellow countryman, the present Bishop Matthew Gaughran.

The gold discoveries on the Witwatersrand about Johannesburg produced
another rush into the interior in the days after the first Transvaal
war. A great city of foreign immigrants--the "Uitlanders"--grew up
rapidly on the upland, where a few months before there had been only
a few scattered Boer farms. Irishmen from Cape Colony and Natal, from
Ireland itself, and from the United States formed a large element in
the local mining and trading community. They were mostly workers. Few
of them found their way into the controlling financier class, which
was largely Jewish. The Irish were better out of this circle of
international gamblers, whose intrigues finally produced the terrible
two years' bloodshed of the great South African war. Many engineers
of the mines were Irish-Americans. Huge consignments of mining
machinery arrived from the United States, and many of the engineers
who came to fit it up remained in the employ of the mining companies.
Until after the war, the Transvaal and Johannesburg had depended
ecclesiastically on the Vicar Apostolic of Natal, but in 1904 a
Transvaal Vicariate was erected, and once more the first bishop was
an Irishman, Dr. William Miller, O.M.I.

We have seen how Irish the South African episcopate has been from the
very outset. Most of the clergy belong to the same missionary race,
as also do the nuns of the various convents, and the Christian
Brothers, who are in charge of many of the schools. Of the white
Catholic population of the various states of the South African Union,
the greater part are Irish. There are about 25,000 Irish in Cape
Colony in a total population of over two millions. There are some
7,000 in Natal, I,500 in Kimberley, and about 2,000 in the Orange
River Colony. In the Transvaal, chiefly in and about Johannesburg,
there are some 12,000 Irish. A few thousand more are to be found
scattered in Griqualand and Rhodesia.

As has been already said, the total numbers are not large in
proportion to that of the population generally, and they belong
chiefly to the industrial and trading classes. The most notable names
among them are those of prelates, priests, and missionaries, who have
founded and built up the organization of the Catholic Church in South
Africa. But there are some names of note also in civil life. Sir
Michael Gallwey was for many years Chief Justice of Natal; the Hon.
A. Wilmot, who has not only held high official posts, but has also
done much to clear up the early history of South Africa, is Irish on
the mother's side; Mr. Justice Shiel is a judge of the Cape Courts;
Eyre and Woodbyrne are Irish names among the makers of Rhodesia; and
amongst those who have done remarkable work in official life may also
be named Sir Geoffrey Lagden, Sir William St. John Carr, and the Hon.
John Daverin. Lagden was for many years British Resident in
Basutoland, the Switzerland of South Africa, where the native tribes
are practically independent under a British protectorate. Griffith,
the paramount chief of the Basuto nation, has been a Catholic since
1911. Sir Geoffrey's tactful policy and wise counsels did much to
promote the prosperity of this native state, and during the trying
days of the South African War, he was able to secure the neutrality
of the tribesmen.

In the Boer wars, Irishmen fought with distinction on both sides.
General Colley, who fell at Majuba in the first Boer War, was a
distinguished Irish soldier. Another great Irishman, General Sir
William Butler, has written the story of Colley's life. Butler
himself was in command of the troops at the Cape before the great
war. If his wise counsels had been followed by the Government, the
war would undoubtedly have been avoided. He refused to have any part
in the war-provoking policy of Rhodes and Chamberlain, and warned the
Home Government that an attack on the Dutch republics would be a
serious and perilous enterprise. When the war came, England owed much
to the enduring valor of Irish soldiers and to the leadership of
Irish generals. One need only name General Hart, of the Irish
Brigade; General French, who relieved Kimberley, and who is now
(1914) Field-Marshal and Commander-in-Chief of the British army in
France; General Mahon, who raised the siege of Mafeking; Colonel
Moore, of the famous Connaught Rangers, now (1914) commandant and
chief military organizer of the Irish National Volunteers; and,
finally, Lord Roberts, who took over the chief command and saved the
situation after the early disasters. Lord Kitchener, who acted as
Roberts's chief-of-staff, succeeded him in the command, and brought
the war to an end by an honorable treaty with the Boer leaders, is a
native of Ireland, but of English descent, and he passed most of his
boyhood in Ireland, in Co. Kerry, where his father had bought a small
property. I used to know an Irish Franciscan lay brother who told me
he had taught the future soldier "many games" when he was quite a
little fellow.

Of the regiments which took part in the war none won a higher fame
than the Munster and the Dublin Fusiliers and the Connaught Rangers.
It was in recognition of their splendid valor that the new regiment
of Irish Guards was added to the British Army.

But the majority of Irishmen sympathized with the Boer republics, and
many of them fought under the Boer flag, of these were legally
British subjects, but many were naturalized burghers of the
Transvaal, and many more were United States citizens, Irish-Americans
from the Rand gold mines. There were two small Irish brigades under
the Boer flag, those of McBride and Lynch (the latter now a member of
the British House of Commons), and an engineer corps commanded by
Colonel Blake, an American. At the first battle before Ladysmith it
was one of the Irish brigades that kept the Boer guns in action,
bringing up ammunition under a rain of shellfire. During the Boer
retreat and Roberts's advance on Pretoria, Blake's engineers were
always with the Boer rearguard and successfully destroyed every mile
of the railway as they went back. Blake had served in the United
States cavalry, had learned mining while on duty in Nevada, and had
then gone to seek his fortune at Johannesburg. The great leader of
the Boer armies, now the Prime Minister of the new South Africa which
has happily arisen out of the storm of war, has Irish connections.
Louis Botha lived before the war in the southeast Transvaal, not far
from Laings Nek, and near neighbors of his were a family of Irish
settlers bearing the honored name of Emmet. The Emmets and the Bothas
were united by ties of friendship and intermarriage, and one of the
Emmets served with Louis Botha during the war.

The Irish colonists of South Africa keep their love for faith and
fatherland, but, as in the United States, they have thoroughly and
loyally thrown in their lot with the new country of which they have
become citizens. Few in number though they are, they are an important
factor in the new Dominion, for their national tradition inspires
them with civic patriotism, and their religion gives them a high
standard of conduct and puts before them, as guides in the work of
life and the solution of the problems of the day, the Christian
principles of justice and charity.

REFERENCES:

Government Census Returns, South Africa; Catholic Directory for
British South Africa (Cape Town, since 1904); The Catholic Magazine,
Cape Town; Wilmot and Chase: History of Cape Colony (London, 1896);
Theal: History of South Africa (5 vols., London, 1888-1893); for the
war period, the _Times_ History of the South African War, and the
British Official History.

IRISH LANGUAGE AND LETTERS

By DOUGLAS HYDE, LL.D., M.R.I.A.

The Celtic languages consist of two divisions, (a) the Gaelic or
Irish division, and (b) the Kymric or Welsh division. Between them
they comprise (a) Irish, Scotch-Gaelic, and Manx, and (b) Welsh,
Armorican, and Cornish. All these languages are still alive except
Cornish, which died out about a hundred years ago.

Of all these languages Irish is the best preserved, and it is
possible to follow its written literature back into the past for some
thirteen hundred years; while much of the most interesting matter has
come down to us from pagan times. It has left behind it the longest,
the most luminous, and the most consecutive literary track of any of
the vernacular languages of Europe, except Greek alone.

For centuries the Irish and their language were regarded by the
English as something strange and foreign to Europe. It was not
recognized that they had any relationship with the Greeks or Romans,
the French, the Germans, or the English. The once well-known
statesman, Lord Lyndhurst, in the British parliament denounced the
Irish as aliens in religion, in blood, and in language. Bopp, in his
great Comparative Grammar, refused them recognition as
Indo-Europeans, and Pott in 1856 also denied their European
connection. It was left for the great Bavarian scholar, John Caspar
Zeuss, to prove to the world in his epoch-making "Grammatica Celtica"
(published in Latin in 1853) that the Celts were really
Indo-Europeans, and that their language was of the highest possible
value and interest. From that day to the present it is safe to say
that the value set upon the Irish language and literature has been
steadily growing amongst the scholars of the world, and that in the
domain of philology Old Irish now ranks close to Sanscrit for its
truly marvellous and complicated scheme of word-forms and
inflections, and its whole verbal system.

The exact place which the Celtic languages (of which Irish is
philologically far the most important) hold in the Indo-European
group has often been discussed. It is now generally agreed upon that,
although both the Celtic and Teutonic languages may claim a certain
kinship with each other as being both of them Indo-European, still
the Celtic is much more nearly related to the Greek and the Latin
groups, especially to the Latin.

All the Indo-European languages are more or less related to one
another. We Irish must acknowledge a relationship, or rather a very
distant connecting tie, with English. But, to trace this home, Irish
must be followed back to the very oldest form of its words, and
English must be followed back to Anglo-Saxon and when possible to
Gothic. The hard mutes (p, t, c) of Celtic (and, for that matter, of
Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Slavonic, and Lithuanian) will be
represented in Gothic by the corresponding soft mutes (b, d, g), and
the soft mutes in Celtic by the corresponding, hard mutes in Gothic.
Thus we find the Irish _dia_ (god) in the Anglo-Saxon _tiw_, the god
of war, whose name is perpetuated for all time in Tiwes-daeg, now
"Tuesday", and we find the Irish _dead_ in the Anglo-Saxon "toth",
now "tooth", and so on. But of all the Indo-European languages Old
Irish possesses by far the nearest affinity to Latin, and this is
shown in a great many ways, not in the vocabulary merely, but in the
grammar, which for philologists is of far more importance,--as, for
example, the _b_-future, the passive in-_r_, the genitive singular
and nominative plural of "o stems", etc. Thus the Old Irish for
"man", nom. _fer_, gen. _fir_, dat. _fiur_, acc. _fer n_--, plur.
nom. _fir_, gen. _fer n_--, is derived from the older forms _viros,
viri, viro, viron_, nom. plur. _viri_, gen. plur. _viron_, which
everyone who knows Latin can see at a glance correspond very closely
to the Latin inflections, _vir, viri, viro, virum_, nom. plur.
_viri_, etc.

So much for the language. When did this language begin to be used in
literature? This question depends upon another--When did the Irish
begin to have a knowledge of letters; when did they begin to commit
their literature to writing; and whence did they borrow their
knowledge of this art?

The oldest alphabet used in Ireland of which remains exist appears to
have been the Ogam, which is found in numbers of stone inscriptions
dating from about the third century of our era on. About 300 such
inscriptions have already been found, most of them in the southwest
of Ireland, but some also in Scotland and Wales, and even in Devon
and Cornwall. Wherever the Irish Gael planted a colony, he seems to
have brought his Ogam writing with him.

The Irishman who first invented the Ogam character was probably a
pagan who obtained a knowledge of Roman letters. He brought back to
Ireland his invention, or, as is most likely, invented it on Irish
soil. Indeed, the fact that no certain trace of Ogam writing has been
found upon the European continent indicates that the alphabet was
invented in Ireland itself. An inscription at Killeen Cormac, Co.
Kildare, survives which seems to show that the Roman alphabet was
known in Ireland in pagan times. Ogam is an alphabet suitable enough
for chiselling upon stones, but too cumbrous for the purposes of
literature. For this the Roman alphabet must have been used. The Ogam
script consists of a number of short lines straight or slanting, and
drawn either below, above, or through one long stem-line. This
stem-line is generally the sharp angle between two faces or sides of
a long upright rectangular stone. Thus four cuts to the right of the
long line stand for S; to the left of it they mean C; passing through
it, half on one side and half on the other, they mean Z. The device
was rude, but it was applied with considerable skill, and it was
undoubtedly framed with much ingenuity. The vowels occurring most
often are also the easiest to cut, being scarcely more than notches
on the edge of the stone. The inscription generally contains the name
of the dead warrior over whom the memorial was raised; it usually
begins on the left corner of the stone facing the reader and is to be
read upwards, and it is often continued down on the right hand
angular line as well.

The language of the Ogam inscriptions is very ancient and nearly the
same forms occur as in what we know of Old Gaulish. The language, in
fact, seems to have been an antique survival even when it was first
engraved, in the third or fourth century. The word-forms are probably
far older than those used in the spoken language of the time. This is
a very important conclusion, and it must have a far-reaching bearing
upon the history of the earliest epic literature. Because if forms of
language much more ancient than any that were then current were
employed on pillar-stones in the third or fourth century, it follows
that this obsolescent language must have survived either in a written
or a regularly recited form. This immediately raises the probability
that the substance of Irish epic literature (which was written down
on parchment in the sixth or seventh century) really dates from a
period much more remote, and that all that is purely pagan in it was
preserved for us in the same antique language as the Ogam
inscriptions before it was translated into what we now call "Old
Irish."

The following is the Ogam alphabet as preserved on some 300 ancient
pillars and stones, in the probably ninth-century treatise in the
Book of Ballymote, and elsewhere:

[Illustration: Ogam Alphabet]

There are a great many allusions to this Ogam writing in the ancient
epics, especially in those that are purely pagan in form and
conception, and there can be no doubt that the knowledge of letters
must have reached Ireland before the island became Christianized.
With the introduction of Christianity and of Roman letters, the old
Ogam inscriptions, which were no doubt looked upon as flavoring of
paganism, quickly fell into disuse and disappeared, but some
inscriptions at least are as late as the year 600 or even 800. In the
thoroughly pagan poem, _The Voyage of Bran_, which such authorities
as Zimmer and Kuno Meyer both consider to have been committed to
parchment in the seventh century, we find it stated that Bran wrote
the fifty or sixty quatrains of the poem in Ogam. Cuchulainn
constantly used Ogam writing, which he cut upon wands and trees and
standing stones for Queen Medb's army to read, and these were always
brought to his friend Fergus to decipher. Cormac, king of Cashel, in
his glossary tells us that the pagan Irish used to inscribe the wand
they kept for measuring corpses and graves with Ogam characters, and
that it was a source of horror to anyone even to take it in his hand.
St. Patrick in his Confession, the authenticity of which no one
doubts, describes how he dreamt that a man from Ireland came to him
with innumerable letters.

In Irish legend Ogma, one of the Tuatha De Danann who was skilled in
dialects and poetry, seems to be credited with the invention of the
Ogam alphabet, and he probably was the equivalent of the Gaulish god
Ogmios, the god of eloquence, so interestingly described by Lucian.

We may take it then that the Irish pagans knew sufficient letters to
hand down to Irish Christians the substance of their pagan epics,
sagas, and poems. We may take it for granted also that the greater
Irish epics (purely pagan in character, utterly untouched in
substance by that Christianity which so early conquered the country)
really represent the thoughts, manners, feelings, and customs of
pagan Ireland.

The effect of this conclusion must be startling indeed to those who
know the ancient world only through the medium of Greek and Roman
literature. To the Greek and to his admiring master, the Roman, all
outside races were simply barbarians, at once despised,
misinterpreted, and misunderstood.

We have no possible means of reconstructing the ancient world as it
was lived in by the ancestors of some of the leading races in Europe,
the Gauls, Spaniards, Britons, and the people of all those countries
which trace themselves back to a Celtic ancestry, because these races
have left no literature or records behind them, and the Greeks and
Romans, who tell us about them, saw everything through the false
medium of their own prejudices. But now since the discovery and
publication of the Irish sagas and epics, the descendants of these
great races no longer find it necessary to view their own past
through the colored and distorting glasses of the Greek or the Roman,
since there has now opened for them, where they least expected to
find it, a window through which they can look steadily at the life of
their race, or of one of its leading offshoots, in one of its
strongholds, and reconstruct for themselves with tolerable accuracy
the life of their own ancestors. It is impossible to overrate the
importance of this for the history of Europe, because neither Teutons
nor Slavs have preserved pictures of their own heroic past, dating
from pagan times. It is only the Celts, and of these the Irish, who
have handed down such pictures drawn with all the fond intimacy of
romance, and descriptions which exhibit the life of western Europeans
at an even earlier culture-stage in the evolution of humanity than do
the poems of Homer.

This conclusion, to which a study of the literature invites us, falls
in exactly with that arrived at from purely archaeological sources.
Professor Ridgeway of Cambridge University, working on archaeological
lines, expresses himself as follows: "From this survey of the
material remains of the _la Tern_ period found actually in Ireland,
and from the striking correspondence between this culture and that
depicted in the _Tain Bo Cualnge_, and from the circumstance that the
race who are represented in the epic as possessing this form of
culture resemble in their physique the tall, fair-haired, grey-eyed
Celts of Britain and the continent, we are justified in inferring (1)
that there was an invasion (or invasions) of such peoples from Gaul
in the centuries immediately before Christ, as is ascribed by the
Irish traditions, and (2) that the poems themselves originally took
shape when the _la Tene_ culture was still flourishing in Ireland.
But as this could hardly have continued much later than A.D. 100, we
may place the first shaping of the poems not much later than that
date and possibly a century earlier."

This conclusion would make the earliest putting together of the Irish
epics almost contemporaneous with Augustus Caesar.

So much for the history and growth of Irish letters.

REFERENCES:

Brash: Ogam inscribed Monuments of the Gaedhil (1879); MacAlister:
Studies in Irish Epigraphy, vol. 1 (1897), vol. 2 (1902), vol. 3
(1907); Rhys: in Proceedings of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries
(Edinburgh, 1892); Ridgeway: Date of the First Shaping of the
Cuchulain Saga (1905), in Proceedings of the British Academy, vol.
II; Joyce: Social History of Ancient Ireland, vol. I, Chap. 2;
Preface to fac-simile edition of the Book of Ballymote.

NATIVE IRISH POETRY

By PROFESSOR GEORGES DOTTIN.

[Note.--This chapter was written in French by M. Dottin, who is a
distinguished professor and dean at the University of Renacs, France.
The translation into English has been made by the Editors.]

By the year 1200 of the Christian era, a time at which the other
national literatures of Europe were scarcely beginning to develop,
Ireland possessed, and had possessed for several centuries, a Gaelic
poetry, which was either the creation of the soul of the people or
else was the work of the courtly bards. This poetry was at first
expressed in rhythmical verses, each containing a fixed number of
accented syllables and hemistichs separated by a pause: